Summary: As Christians, joy should is more than just a thought, it is a way of life

Ps 100:2 Worship the LORD with gladness; come before him with joyful songs.

Ps 100:3 Know that the LORD is God. It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.

Ps 100:4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name.

Ps 100:5 For the LORD is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.

I. Shout for Joy!

People shout when there happy; People scream when they are scared; People wail when their hearts are broken.

The Bible instructs us to shout for joy! Too many people sit quietly with a smile on their face because they are filled with joy and too few people are out there shouting for joy the wonders that the Lord has done.

The Lord has repealed sin. He created Humanity in His own image, we blew it and He fixed it. It is just no more complicated than that. All over the world, there are people who long for spiritual freedom. They are in prison and they know it. They are hurting, lost, shaken, misguided, lonely, confused, pessimistic, abandoned and too many of these people are Christian.

It is hard to imagine someone being set free from prison and them just hanging out by the gate, looking over the fence back into the prison, just because they do not know where to go once they have been released. The number one place to go, if Jesus Christ has set you free, is to a place where you can shout for joy.

Have you been having a good time, your mind is full of thoughts of how good God is and then someone comes up alongside you and says, “This is stupid, I don’t know why life has to be like this.” Pow! You are in the dumps. You are thinking, “I was having a good time and dang, now I am having a bad time.”

However if you are in a position where you are celebrating what God is doing in your life and you are reflecting on His goodness and it show on your face and in your words, and somebody comes up; what are they going to say, “Excuse me, I want to ruin your day. I can see you are happy and having a good time and I am just here to wreck that.” No, when they come in and can see the joy of the Lord living in you, they will want what you have.

Many people have a life verse, a special passage that is very important to them. If you do not have a life verse perhaps, you should consider Philippians 4:4, “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!”

II. Entering God’s presence

Ps 100:4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise;

Here is a recipe for getting and maintaining that attitude of joy in the Lord. If you are one of the many people who get suck in the humdrum of life. If you find yourself getting pulled down and sucked into a defeated mindset, here is the plan for success.

“Enter His gates,” not your gates, but His gates. Do not ask God to come meet you; go meet Him. John the Baptist quoted the prophet Isaiah, “I am the voice of one calling in the desert, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.’’ God is not supposed to make our way straight, we should be making His way straight.

When a person returns home after a long days work, walks through the door and the spouse says, “How was your day? The worst thing that can be said is, “Better than being home.” We want to enter with thanksgiving, “How was your day?” “Great to see you, Babe! Good to be alive.” We need to live with an attitude of Gratitude, especially toward The Lord.

Ps 40:5 Many, O LORD my God, are the wonders you have done. The things you planned for us no one can recount to you; were I to speak and tell of them, they would be too many to declare.

Johnson Oatman Jr. wrote, “When upon life’s billows you are tempest tossed, When you are discouraged thinking all is lost, Count your many Blessings name them one by one, And it will surprise you what the Lord has done.

Blessing #1.

God loves you:

Ro 5:8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Blessing #2

God has given you life:

Eph 2:1, 4, 5, 8 As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins . . . But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. . . . Through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—